1. Field of the invention
The present invention concerns an electrical connector module comprising, in an insulative material connector body, a plurality of female contacts adapted to receive, through holes in the upper part of the body, male contacts attached to the ends of the electrical conductors to be connected, means being provided for establishing electrical connections between the female contacts.
2. Description of the prior art
Connector modules of this kind are well known and are generally designed to be fixed to extruded support rails, for example spring rails as described in French Pat. No. 2 441 932.
These modules are used to interconnect electrical conductors. It is often desirable to insert electrical or electronic components between the conductors, such as fuses, resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, etc. Known connector modules are not designed to be able to accommodate any such components, or at best a few small components which have to be incorporated into the modules during manufacture, replacing a number of female contacts. Also, these components have therefore to be incorporated by the manufacturer of the module, which is then supplied completely enclosed to the user. This obviously leads to a high unit cost since each module has to be designed by the manufacturer according to the intended application, so that true mass production is impossible.
An object of the present invention is a module of the kind defined hereinabove adapted to be equipped with a large number of different components by the module user, so as to enable mass production of the modules at reduced unit cost.